soapbox

Rule #6666666666666666666 (’cause more sixes means more evil) = The foul-tempered Equipment Gods, offspring of Furies and a very mentally disturbed ancient Greek engineer, demand regular sacrifices of flesh upon one’s experimental apparatus and its auxiallary equipment in order to maintain their proper functioning. Failure to do so results in many ill fortunes visited upon the experimentalist. Acceptable forms of sacrifice include the blood, sweat, and tears of students whose research depends upon the apparatus in question. Potency scales with experience, such that 1 post-doc = 2 grad students = 6 undergrads = 18 high-school interns.

I had no idea that ebay could be so exciting! I got a bid on my calculator yesturday (my first ebay sale ever!) and now with the auction ending in less than two hours I have got 6 more bids! I should get back from spinning just in time to catch the last 20 minutes or so.
Yea for ebay and money!

After putting the telescope to bed this morning, on my way back up to the 2.4m, I happened to turn around. And there was a beautiful orange full moon (well, maybe not exactly full but pretty damned close) hanging low in the sky yet. So instead of making more attempts at the elusive green flash, I hung out on the rocks beside the 2.4m and got a few pics while watching the Moon set. Very pretty. The haze over the valley and above us (or maybe that was cirrus) made for a dazzling color display. A lovely shade of blue in the lower portion of the sky, and maybe at an altitude of 30 or 40 degrees above the horizon, the sky turned pink. I’m including the two better shots I got, one over the telescope, and one over the valley.

They’re big files (1024xwhatever images), since I put them in the images folder myself instead of uploading through the blog this time. The one of the obs is on the regular camera setting, and the one of the valley is on the night setting, so the Moon looks a little funny because I didn’t have anything other than myself to stabilize the camera on for the longer exposure.

They can be found here and here.